All posts tagged: Jim Avignon

The Berlin Wall has now been down as long as it was up. 28 years, two months and 27 days passed in both cases, and we are still looking for sane global policy about the freewill of people to prevail.

Ronald Reagan, a Republican president lauded by the right, once intoned while standing in front of the wall,

“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace…Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Also interestingly in that same speech Reagan referred to the graffiti on it;

“As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, ‘This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.’ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Mr. Reagan saw the hypocrisy of building walls, separating people, restricting freedom. Yet we today have another president so far to the right of Reagan that he has even threatened to shut down the government in order to secure funding to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

It’s the annual peregrination from Brooklyn to Miami after the Thanksgiving holiday to see the sand, the surf, the aerosol masterpieces. For readers who have witnessed the growing spectacle of the Street Art scene in this city and are worried about the full-scale absorption of Street Art and graffiti culture into the larger Urban Contemporary Art rubric, this place is a tidal wave of evidence that the sub-culture/counter-culture is simply loved and adored by too many people.

Of course, tastes vary and not everyone is into the same aesthetic, message, style, technique, and there are still plenty of ruffians trying to stir sh*t up, thank God. But it’s probably psychologically healthy for artists and fans from the origins of this scene on the street to take some pride in the fact that this grassroots arts movement is producing some of the most compelling shows, exhibitions, and events – many rivaling what is happening inside the ART BASEL fair that all these events are associated with.

All week starting this Monday we’ll be there on the ground hustling from the formal to the informal, sponsored to the D.I.Y. – to at least capture some of that energy and insight to bring to you. In partnership with UN – the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, BSA will bring you action and excitement on the streets – here are some highlight to help you with your planning:

WYNWOOD WALLS MIAMI ART WEEK

An ongoing festival of murals begun in the late 2000s, Wynwood Walls’ theme for this year is “Fear Less” and the 12 new murals will for the double meaning of the expression. From the words of Jessica Goldman Srebnick, CEO of Goldman Properties, who are folks behind Wynwood Walls:

“Every year we choose a unifying theme and ask our artists to somehow address this in their work with the goal of pushing the narrative. This year, with everything going on in the world I felt it appropriate to advocate a message of courage, in the hopes that we can all embody courage in our everyday lives. Street artists by vocation are some of the most fearless people I’ve met — and here in Wynwood, we’ve grown from a marginal area that many feared to explore – into one of the most desirable art-filled locations in the world. My father (Tony Goldman) always said, ‘Don’t give in to fear,’ and this year we’re honoring that sentiment.”

Fear Less will showcase the work of a varied mix of outstanding artists – some household names in the street art world, others up and coming. In addition to Hiratsuka, artists include AVAF (Brazil), Beau Stanton (CA, USA), Case (Germany) Dasic Fernandez (Chile) David Choe (CA, USA), Faith47 (South Africa), Felipe Pantone (Spain), Findac (UK) , Okuda (Spain), Pixel Pancho (Italy,) Risk (CA, USA), Tatiana Suarez (FL, USA) . Artist Audrey Kawasak (USA) will be painting a mural at Goldman Properties’ The Hotel on South Beach. In addition to the murals artist Ken Hiratsuka will carve boulders in the style of his intricate carvings he did on the NYC streets during the 1980’s.

Artist Talk: Thursday December 1st. 6:30 PM at the Goldman Global Arts Gallery at Wynwood Walls. A panel discussion moderated by our own Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Steven P. Harrington with participating artists: Martha Cooper, Faith 47, Crash, Tristan Eaton and Pixel Pancho. This event is free and open to the public.

Goldman Global Arts Gallery Exhibition:

Featuring original works by the artists of the Wynwood Walls. Open Thursday December 1st, 2016 thru December 4th 2016 from 10AM-10PM and then 11AM-8PM thru February 2017, when the exhibit ends.

Wynwood Walls, Open to the Public during Art Basel Miami Art Week, Wynwood Walls is free and open to the public daily from 10 AM to Midnight.

Wynwood Walls is located at 2520 NW 2nd Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets.

MANA URBAN ART PROJECTS X JUXTAPOZ MAGAZINE

This is an epic intersection that you’ve been waiting for – hi brow/low brow, East Coast raw with West Coast surreally pop, old skool graff with hyperreal, graphic, optic and pop-gold muralistas .

All of these people in bed together is going to make a lot of sweet love people – and babies, and possibly some communicable diseases. Can you imagine the mass of the swarming of creative bodies from Juxtapoz, Thinkspace, 1XRun, Mana Contemporary, Bushwick Collective, Jonathan Levine, and many unannounced guests? It’s a first date for many of these awkward actors but we are not missing this gorgeous clusterduck!

Juxtapoz bookstore 1xRun

MILK presents Scott Campbell: WHOLE GLORY.

Juxtapoz Clubhouse: 537 NW 24th Street Entrance

Along with Milk Studios , Juxtapoz is teaming up for this special two-day tattoo exhibition/interactive art installation/tattoo emporium. “Lucky recipients will be selected via a lottery on an hourly basis”

6 – 9 p.m. at The Dog (1306 North Miami Avenue)Heliotrope Prints are $50 limited-edition fine art prints with 100% of proceeds benefitting the Heliotrope Foundation, a 501(c)(3) founded by Swoon in order to streamline her three art-based community building initiatives in Haiti, New Orleans, and the Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania.Learn more: www.heliotropefoundation.org

ABOUT THE HOST VENUE:Curated by Christopher “Jillionaire” Leacock of Major Lazer, The Dog is a weeklong popup in Downtown Miami that will bring together a group of friends—comprised of acclaimed musicians and artists—to form a hub for inspired expression across the creative disciplines. The Dog is bar, dancehall, and art gallery rolled into one; a site-specific and immersive experience that bridges the gap between contemporary art, culture, and music. www.molly.nyc/thedog

The Millerntor Gallery is a social business by and for Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli. Our mantra is ”art creates water” – we use art as a universal language to inspire people and involve them in collective creative engagement. Revenues from art sales and donations are being transformed into clean water. The Millerntor Gallery came to life in 2011 as an art festival inside the stadium of the legendary football club FC Sankt Pauli. Growing rapidly it has already become a global cultural movement that blends individual creative energies into one collective force to change the world for the better. More than 1000 artists have contributed their talents, crafts and works for countless Millerntor Gallery art projects in many different countries.

A constantly accelerating world is hard to document in a static mural, but Berlin’s Jim Avignon has been racing around the world to do it for quite a while. His bending neo-pop-comic illustration style cleverly points to his concerns about social, political and behavioral ills, as well as the communication and the technological race that appears to be outstripping our ability to adjust to it.

Travelling to Ramallah with the Goethe Institute last month, Jim created walls that are metaphorical, including one figure holding his own brain painted on the Separation Wall. Examine the figures and the symbols – sometimes they are simply attractive, while other times they have more developed meanings. With ongoing rhetoric in many countries about building walls to keep people in or keep people out – while business and trade walls continue to evaporate, Avignon may soon be lampooning walls on a wall.

Gwen Stacy Parts I and II

Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics.

Discussions at panels cut into impassioned discussions by senior women in the courtyard or didactic examinations in the street – some for illustration, others for whimsy, none to be ignored. More of a fact finding mission than cogent analysis, you may find it difficult to follow the narrative and so it is better to let go and allow yourself be battered by the insights and observations delivered with the jumpy cuts and uncompleted thoughts and discussions, preferring instead to sink into the tribe of the humans, here selectively displayed for your pleasure and hopefully, edification.

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. ROME in the Street and the Gallery by Dioniso Punk
2. Hendrik Beikirch (ECB): East Harbor in the Netherlands
3. Michael Beerens – “Master”
4. “Art As A Weapon” Trailer

BSA Special Feature: ROME in the Street and the Gallery by Dioniso Punk

The punk rock connection to graffiti is as strong as any subculture’s – or of any people who feel marginalized in effect or practice by the dominant culture preventing their voice. The narrative that graffiti belongs exclusively to Hip Hop has been posited and disproved over time; as Jesus said, “Graffitti belongs to everyone.” *

In “Street & Gallery” we see that the need for expression, illegal and otherwise, is as urgent as ever in the Street Art scene in Rome today and for many it is a means to express opinions and philosophies that they hope will in turn push greater society forward in some way. For others it is simply to fight the stagnation.

Billed as an “unofficial video” by Dioniso Punk, the short documentary takes you into the kitchen and studio and gallery and street as a variety of artists, academics, vegetable vendors and philosophers narrate the pragmatic and the existential. Call it activism, call it a yearning for freedom, call it being generally pissed off at institutional inertia – the spirit of graffiti and it’s multiple urban art corollaries will not die. Either will arena rock and roll, despite early punk’s best wishes.

Interesting to note that the globalization of capital has not globalized all banks accounts and has thrust the xenophobia of the Italian middle class into a harsh light here, as it has elsewhere in so-called developed countries. Here we see a modern Italy struggling with ideological self-beliefs about justice and equality and wondering how they apply to a new immigrant class who has no interest in their cogitations. Moving from the educated class studio environment, the trained artist suddenly finds a social/political role, and for the first time perhaps contemplates it. Meanwhile, many in the street have never seen the inside of a studio and have a slightly different take on the state of things. Let the conversation continue.

Hendrik Beikirch: East Harbor in the Netherlands

Hendrik Beikirch traveled to Heerlen in the Netherlands to paint a new mural over three and a half days. Organized by Heerlen Murals, the wizened, troubled subject adds to the series of images ECB has been creating across many walls in the last handful of years.

Michael Beerens – “Master”

Last summer the Frenchman Beerens took a trip out into the mountains and created a piece on a a small abandoned building. Ah, summer, come thou near…

“Art As A Weapon” Trailer

From Breadtruck Films, the new documentary focuses on a school in Myanmar (Burma) that teaches street art as a form of non-violent struggle. Street Artists Shepard Fairey and JR figure into the story, as does the military, art as a weapon, and art as a tool for revolution.

Together the collection gives you an idea of the range of mediums, techniques, styles, and sentiments that appear on the street today as the scene continues to evolve worldwide. Every seven days on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our weekly interview with the street.

We hope you enjoy this collection – some of our best Images of The Year from 2012.

But before we begin, let’s boogie! It’s Friday!

It’s gonna be hot enough to fry some Jerk Chicken on the sidewalk today. Here’s a taste of nerdily chilly and funkaliciously electronic Hot Chip doing a song called “Night and Day”.

Let’s Sweat!

“Letters From America” (London)

A handful of Americans were in London this 4th of July for the opening of a new show at Black Rat Projects Gallery in conjunction with LA’s Corey Helford Gallery. “Letters From America” includes new works from RISK, Ron English, SABER, and TrustoCorpand is now open to the public.

Risk (photo by Butterfly courtesy of the gallery)

Risk (photo by Butterfly courtesy of the gallery)

LUSH “You Become What You Hate” (U.K.)

Also some people have called to tell us of some sightings in London of the bad boy Australian Street Artist LUSH. The axiom that entitles the show, so be careful, haters. The LUSH location is a warehouse someplace near the Hackneywick Station. Good lush!

Also happening this weekend:

The Twist Gallery in Toronto, Canada invites you to “Mischief Over” a show by CASE. This show is now open to the general public. Click here for more details.

At the A – Side B – Side Gallery in London, Tinsel & Twinkle will show you how to kidnap a banker at their “Mini Retrospective”. This show is now open to the general public. Click here for more details.

A few years ago when we started telling you about this art show in a Brooklyn hardware store, people questioned BSA’s sanity and it’s relevance to the street. Even now, there are some street artists who have not exhibited in this show, but that list will be trimming down to zero in the next few years. That’s because of two things – one is that Joe Franquinha and his family re-imagined their store as artists began to re-imagine the surrounding neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick. The other is that the existing gallery system needs to change and Street Artists (and others) have been exploring every other alternative to it for the last decade. The only ivy covered walls that should be relevant to this creative spirit are in the garden section behind the store.

Here is a sneak peak at the Crest Arts show that opens Saturday in the store. Everybody is welcome and there will be music, food, art, and community busting out all over the place. Also, Franklin the pig.

Jim Avignon, born in 1967 in Berlin, is one of the main characters of the new-pop movement. A lauded and much-respected cult figure in the Techno subculture in Berlin. Currently he lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Berlin. He started painting when he was 21 years old, exhibiting in techno clubs. His ideas on art were very clear: “I‘d rather sell a thousand images for one dollar, than one image for a thousand dollars.” He demonstrated his commitment to this philosophy when he exhibited his work in Frankfurt in 1995: the public was allowed to take any of the 800 originals on display home for free. This exhibition was aptly named “Get Rich With Art”. At a 1992 exhibition in Kassel, he created one painting each day only to destroy it in the evening. A documentary was made about the exhibition, called “Destroy Art Galleries”. Jim Avignon has proven himself a prolific, provocative and highly original artist. Two of his books are: “Popbones” (1996) and “Busy” (with DAG, 1998). For the Buddy Bear Berlin Show in 2001, he designed a bear that stood in a prominent location on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin for more than a year.

As you may have heard, New York’s young artist community has been in a rather fast migration away from Manhattan for this entire century.

And so has most of its Street Art.

As the neighborhood of Bushwick assumes the role of new art nerve center (and hard charging, chatty hormone-infused bohemia), the Street Art that began in Williamsburg at the turn of the millenium is without question a natural companion for the trip. This weekend Bushwick celebrated its 6th official Open Studios program (BOS) and gave Street Art it’s genealogical due as major influencer to the whole scene by inviting a number of the newer names to exhibit indoors for the opening party. Naturally, if not ironically, the streets walls had work by many of same.

Always in flux, the current Street Art scene reflects the players as much as the chaotic and diversified D.I.Y. times we’re in. As the more designed multiples of Fairey and the repetition of Cost have given much ground to the highly labor intensive one-offs with a story today, you can see that this narrative style may have been set into motion by people like Swoon and Elbow-Toe in the intervening wave.

To give you a sense of the complex visual ecosystem that influences the fine art/ Street Art continuum in 2012, here’s some eye candy from inside, outside, sanctioned and freewheeling that were on display during BOS this year.

As the cultural center continues to shift further away from Manhattan, Bushwick and Street Art continue to have a love affair that grows every year. We just caught up with a handful of artists putting up work to celebrate Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) 2012 as it turns 6 this year. The artists were invited to paint by GCM Steel Products and Agency X Events to mark their Bushwick 5 Points Festival, which they hope will be the first of many in support of BOS.

BSA readers are probably at BOS right now, but for the 14 of you who couldn’t make it to BK today, here’s some process shots of Street Art going up before your eyeballs. Art seeking pilgrims will see it all as they race between the hundreds of studios that are open today. Artists of all sizes, shapes, styles, and disciplines continue to bring the neighborhoods of Brooklyn alive!

Come out support the artists and play today and tomorrow as BOS will be going on through out the weekend. With special thanks to the good folks at GCM Steel Products, Bushwick 5 Points Festival will be happening all day today with art, food and music until 8:00 pm at Troutman and St. Nicholas.

“Worked in some countries – in others, not so much.”

Newsflash: Global Street Art is not homogeneous. If you were beginning to think that international Street Art superstars like Banksy and Shepard Fairey had the whole scene on lockdown, Jim Avignon can assure you that will never happen. Each local scene is as individual as the culture it grows from, subject to the opinions and perceptions of the people, politicians, and police in each city. When the Berlin/Brooklyn – based artist traveled to seven countries this spring to organize walls with local artists, Avignon found that scarcity of art supplies or water can just as easily derail a mural as feelings of competition and the fear of the Devil Himself. Working with about 50 artists over six weeks in a cross-cultural Street Art program sponsored by the Goethe Institute, he learned that local is not necessarily global, and all manner of comedy will crop up on the road to a dope wall.

“The main intention was not to have just a wall with ten paintings next to each but to find ways for people to work together,” explains Avignon about the program he brought with Brazilian DJ Holger Beier and curator Alicia Zamora from Nicaragua. “We did an open call via the Internet and Facebook and we asked people to send in designs,” he explains while talking about the mix of Street Artists, graffiti artists, graphic designers, and illustrators who were ultimately selected. The plan included a week of painting and wheat-pasting, followed by a community party to celebrate the new work. Admittedly, they could have been a bit better prepared, but Avignon and team found a variety of working styles, weather conditions, and perceptions about the nature of the art and it’s proper place that they didn’t realize would face them. While the tour was a success in terms of building cultural relationships via Street Art, Avignon says getting people to work together, “Worked in some countries – in others, not so much.”

In English speaking countries the project was called “Urban Heartbeat” and in Spanish speaking countries “De Mi Barrio A Tu Barrio”. Here are images of the various walls and Jim Avignon’s personal observations and experiences, which are illuminating and sometimes very entertaining.

San Jose, Costa Rica (Duration: 7 days)

Our beautiful wall was not only in the center of the city but was also part of the Parliament, which ultimately caused us a couple of problems that we could not have foreseen. Street Art and graffiti art seem to have a long tradition in Costa Rica and our group was well organized and held together by a local artist named Mush. The guys worked so fast that the wall almost looked finished after a day.

Since the wall was a part of the Parliament the press was very keen to find any political statements in our work. They found plenty. Freddy Masis’ monkey character, which had a couple of similarities in appearance with a local politician was next to a gate that let the cars in. So every once in a while when the gate swung open the monkey was behind the gate, giving the appearance of being in jail. TV teams came and made a big fuss, placing upset politicians on camera in front of our wall and all the attention achieved a complete halt of the whole project after three days. The German ambassador had a long discussion with the minister of cultural affairs, and they eventually allowed us to continue and finish.

Kingston, Jamaica (Duration: 3 days)

Our official wall next to the national stadium was postponed because we couldn’t show a sketch of it in advance. We were moved to a wall that was next to an empty lawn in the middle of nowhere. There were a lot of local kids who came to help but most of the locals were rather skeptical.

Most of these artists had never done a wall before, and they needed some help on how to work large. There was a tendency to start late, with some people only showing up in the morning of the last day. This was our first country and we had no idea how to organize everything – like where to buy paint and get water and provisions, etcetera. In the end there was a nice mood with everybody working at their own place. Some local people thought we were doing the Devils work, unfortunately. The paste-ups that we put up next to the wall all got destroyed in the night. At another time while artists were painting a policeman arrived and told us it would be better if we remove certain images which were considered devilish – like one portrait that showed a third eye. It was clear that if we didn’t repaint, the walls would be repainted for us, and that actually happened in the night after the opening party. It seemed like it would be a difficult country for young artists.

For our celebration party the sound system was giant and very impressive – too bad nobody knew about our party and only a few people came, the foreign minister among them – which didn’t impress the local artists.

Managua, Nicaragua (Duration: 5 days)

We had a very dusty and moldy wall next to the university. There were a lot of trees around so we had some shadow but also it was a bit difficult to take photos. We had to prime the wall by ourselves – a task that consumed almost half of the time we had allotted for the project. Finding and purchasing the paint at the Mercado Oriental (a very big local market) turned out to be difficult and we got lost and almost didn’t find our way out there.

The Nicaragua experience was rather tough as most of the artists didn’t speak any English and we had to deal with 3 generations of sprayers, who were all a bit suspicious about us and the project. They believe that Graffiti in Central America started in Nicaragua, and therefore didn’t want anyone to come and tell them how to do it (which we never had in mind). Additionally, the painters didn’t want to deal with the paste-ups or collaborate with the participants from other countries. The final challenge was that they understood the whole project as a competition that they wanted to win, and they kept claiming that they were the best. Indeed one could say that they had a very unique style; they were all focusing on natural and pre-Columbian imagery, a bright range of colors, and avoiding “negative” images like skulls or guns. They also avoided any influences of contemporary pop culture and did not want to put their images on any blogs or Facebook. I was fascinated and irritated about it and for 3 days the mood while working was relatively down, while only on the last day it cheered up a bit.

Panama, Panama (Duration: 7 days)

Our walls were in a very nice place in the old part of the city with two walls facing the ocean, the others on the side of a building. Kids came and skated around and played football while we painted but there were no shadows and there was a lot of direct sun beating down on us.

Panama City seems to be on the way to becoming the next Singapore or Dubai; There is a brand new skyline in the south of the city, money is a big issue, and the population is very mixed, almost like New York. We had a nice mix of artists, and they were pretty open to letting their work merge with one another’s art. Also all of them seem to be quite professional – trying to make a living from their art and many saw our project as a promotional platform. Sadly, the local organizers tried to cut down expenses and it resulted in no water for the artists and no money for paste-ups. To overcome these obstacles, we made our planned paste-ups out of a hundred A4-sized sheets of paper and some bad moods. There were also plans to make some money with our opening party, which would have stopped the nice people from coming. We fought against it and in the end the party was free and there were more than 400 guests.

Port of Spain, Trinidad (Duration: 4 days)

We had a nicely prepared wall next to the Savanna – a big arena where the Carnival happens every year.

The situation was a bit like the one we had in Jamaica. Music is the much bigger business here and there is not a big tradition for painting in the streets. There is only one famous Street Artist, who had painted birds in black and white all over the city, but he now has moved to Mexico.

None of our artists had worked on walls before and they came from a graphic design background. It was a well mixed group but also I had a feeling that many of the artists were sort of introverted and they just focused on their individual work without interacting with the other artists. I didn’t do a piece of my own but helped everybody with the backgrounds and the graduations. This was the first time we were done with the wall a day earlier than planned. Our celebration party in Trinidad was the biggest one of the tour with over 500 people, free food and drinks, a bunch of DJs, and a big capoeira dance group performing.

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Duration: 7 days)

Because all of the central part of Santo Domingo is a historical landmark it was impossible for us to get a wall there. The organizers considered the suburbs to be too dangerous so instead they found us an abandoned tower next to the harbor with a large semi-indoors space. Here they covered the walls with four giant canvasses. In front of the canvasses was a big scaffolding, making it pretty much impossible to get a view of the wall while we working on it.

There is not much of a big Street Art culture in Santo Domingo and during a tour through the suburbs we saw some nicely painted shags and delis – but that was it. Naturally it was no surprise almost all our painters came from at least a semi-academic background and when you combine that background with the fact that everybody had to paint on canvas, it pushed the entire project in a different direction. Paint was difficult to get and only came in pre-mixed colors that were not very bright. We were disappointed by some of these things but on the other hand the organizers brought food every two hours. It was no surprise that everybody worked rather slowly and thoughtfully. We decided pair up two artists for each canvas, and the nice results told us that it was a good decision.

Sadly, after one week of sunshine there was a heavy thunderstorm on the night of the opening party and it destroyed any party feelings that we had.

Guatemala, Guatemala (Duration: 4 days)

For our final city we had a 120 meter wall that was pre-painted cyan blue in the heart of the city next to the main square. Also there was electrified barbed wire on top of the wall, which we were told we should not touch under any circumstance.

Our group of artists was mixed in a good way; graffiti guys, illustrators, street artists, half guys, half girls, and all of them spoke English. Artist Fla K.O., a local hero, helped to get everything organized and the mood was really nice, with us meeting the artists every evening for drinks.

Painting the wall was more of a difficult situation. Many people were carrying guns around there and brutality on the streets is a big issue. One artist Lily Acevedo made the stencil of the portrait of an 8 year old kid that had been killed in the streets a few weeks earlier. Just as we began painting the wall the city began a construction project that included tearing up the street and replacing the old cobblestones with new ones. Artists mixed with street workers, and there was a TV team around us making a documentation of the project. It was difficult to get good photos of the wall without artists standing in front of it. It was a bit of a mess but also it was funny situation many times.